“You’re talking,” I said.
“I can’t believe I actually have visitors.” She walked out of frame, disappearing and leaving the reddish background of her painting. “I haven’t had visitors in so long!” She reappeared in the bog painting, standing in front of the steaming water and next to the green-skinned woman. “It gets so lonely!”
“Why can’t the other paintings talk?” I asked. “Or can they?” My eyes shifted back and forth.
“No, no.” She waved her hand. “Just me. And I don’t know. I guess the castle liked me so much it brought me to life.” She paused, eyes rolling upward. “Well, as much as a talking painting can be alive.”
“How odd,” Morton murmured.
“It gets lonely being the only painting who can talk,” the woman said. “I’m Margaret, by the way.”
“I’m Niamh.” I stepped forward, studying her in her long beige dress and plain brown slippers. “Why don’t you get any visitors?”
“I’m not sure.” She donned a thoughtful expression. “People just stopped coming one day, and I couldn’t leave this hallway. I used to be able to visit paintings all around the castle!”
“Maybe this is a secret hallway?” Morton asked.
“But why would it suddenly become secret when it wasn’t before?” I tapped my chin, then my eyes widened. “Maybe now that we’ve found you, that means you can leave the hallway.”
I turned toward the double goldens doors in the distance. “What’s behind those doors?”
“The library.” Margaret tugged at her shiny black hair, plaited in a braid.
Morton perked up. “I’m starving,” he whispered.
“Are there paintings in the library?” I asked.
Margaret stilled for a moment, then gasped. “I think so.”
“Do you want to try to go into one? We’ll meet you in there?”
Margaret let out a little squeak and nodded, and we walked alongside her down the hallway as she hopped from painting to painting.
We got to the door, and Margaret entered the last painting, bouncing on her feet. “Oh, I’m so excited to finally be able to leave this hallway again.”
I bit my lip, wanting this to work. If it didn’t, we’d have gotten Margaret’s hopes up for no reason, and then I’d feel awful, and a selfish, small part of me wondered if upsetting one of its paintings would be enough for the castle to kick us out.
Morton and I looked at each other, and I willed those self-serving thoughts away, then nodded and reached for the brass handle of the door. I opened it, then stepped inside, gasping.
We stood in a library. A real library, all the books and shelves and the smell of paper making it feel like we were back in our tower again.
“I don’t want to complain, but this library is incredibly dirty,” Morton said.
“Maybe no one has visited the library either? Maybe it was lost along with the hallway?”
His tongue forked out, and he slithered down my body to the floor. “I don’t know if I can eat books covered in so much dust. It’ll make me sick.”
I frowned, realizing he was right. Cobwebs stretched from corner to corner, and thicks layers of dust covered the books and shelves.
I passed a shelf that was broken in half, all the books caved in and piled up.
“Oh, I can’t help it. I’m so hungry!” Morton glided across the floor, devouring every book in his path.
“Morton!” I yelled.
“That’s surprising,” he said, letting out a loud belch, paper crumbles falling out of his mouth and floating to the floor along with a poof of dust. “Did you know this castle was undiscovered for hundreds of years? It was only colonized in the last few centuries.”
He kept going, eating book after book, all of them strewn across the floor.
